


It's Okay to Be You

by AnarchyIsFreedom



Series: Mutually Pining Reddie [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King, It - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Suicide, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Crushes, Gay Richie Tozier, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Suicidal Thoughts, i think, implied Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, stan is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-30 08:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20768510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnarchyIsFreedom/pseuds/AnarchyIsFreedom
Summary: Richie needs to tell his best friend something, and Stan is more than willing to offer a shoulder to cry on.





	It's Okay to Be You

**Author's Note:**

> I used some plot points of the miniseries in here but they're out of order, as in they happen after the events of the movie. You don't need to have seen the miniseries, everything is explained.

Stan was upstairs reading when the phone started ringing. He sighed as he grabbed his bookmark and let the book close harshly. He had been trying to finish the book for days, yet he was continuously interrupted, in the climax no less. 

A pointed exhale escaped him as he answered, “Hello?” 

The other side was mostly quiet but a few throaty noises had slipped out, “S-Stan the man? That you?” The questions quickly followed by a too loud, too forced laugh.

“Richie? What happened?”

“Can’t I just call my best friend? My dear ol’ pal? My Jewy boy sc-”

“Beep beep, Richie. What’s going on?”

“I-” He started to talk but cut himself off with a noticeable gulp and sharp intake of breath, “Can you come over? I would’ve but uh,”

But his breathing was too heavy to maintain balance? He would’ve but crying would cloud his eyes making it harder for him to ride his bike? He would’ve but he didn’t want anyone to see him so vulnerable?

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Richie didn’t respond but Stan could visualize him nodding as he hung up. He ran a hand through his curls as he made his way to the garage, calling out to his parents that he’d be going out for a while.

He made a point of riding faster than usual, thinking about the state of his typically light-hearted friend. He was so focused on where he was heading that he almost didn’t notice the rest of the loser club heading his way. Only stopping when Mike called his name. He looked at them and back down the street, ultimately deciding his friends might have more knowledge on what the hell was going on with Richie. He quickly crossed to the other side of the road and came to a stop.

“Hey, St-St-Stan. We were just coming to get y-you.” Bill stuttered out.

Bev chimed in, “Yeah, we were gonna go build a dam by the bridge, Ben says he knows how to layer the wood.” Ben smiled, his cheeks going the slightest bit pink.

He glanced over them. Their backpacks were bulging with different supplies, likely for the dam, Stan observed. They all seemed to be in good spirits, except maybe Eddie. He was staring at the sidewalk as they talked, seemingly uninterested in the conversation.

He shook his head, “Sorry guys. I’m heading over to Richie’s. He just asked me to come over, seemed important.” 

Eddie’s head snapped up at this. His eyes first portrayed hurt but the emotion was quickly overturned by anger, “Seriously?” His voice came out nasally and rushed, quickly followed by a scoff.

Ben’s eyebrows pulled together, his lips pursing the slightest bit, “That’s.. Weird. Eddie already went by his place, but he said he was too busy.”

“He didn’t just say he was too busy! He refused to look at me then slammed the door in my face! What if I had been any closer? He could’ve hit me with it and given me a bloody nose. Or worse! What if he shut it hard enough to break my nose? He shut that door pretty fucking hard! Do you _ know  _ how my mom would react if I came home with a broken nose? This is ridiculous-” The boy’s face went red as he ranted about the endless possibilities of injury. 

The other losers shared confused and worried faces. Stan shook his head and repositioned himself on his bike. “I should probably go see what’s going on then, I’ll see you guys later.”

The kids nodded and parted ways, Eddie still grumbling to himself. 

Stan rode up to his friend’s house, standing his bike up at the side of the empty driveway. He rang the doorbell and immediately the door flung open, revealing a red tear stained face and disheveled hair. The glasses wearing boy moved forward rapidly as if to hug him but flinched back with just as much speed.

Stan stepped inside and Richie all but slammed the door behind him. “Hah, you took forever dude, thought you stood me up!” The grin resting on his face felt too off, unnatural.

“Richie, what-” The words seemed to fail on his tongue. He hadn’t seen his friend looking so miserable in what seemed like forever, “What happened?”

“Nothing!” His voice came out too quickly, too high pitched, too… off. “I have just come to the horrible realization that what I’m doing is wrong, I must cease my love affair with Eddie’s m- with Eddie’s mo- with-” His voice falling silent as he tried to restrain the sobs, tears spilling out of his eyes. He brought his hands to wipe away the offending liquid, pushing his glasses up with them.

Stan stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. After a few moments he tried to put his hand on Richie’s shoulder but was shaken off almost immediately. “Richie…” His eyes glanced around the other boy’s face, then to the rest of the house. He looked for something, anything, that could give him a clue as to what was going on.

“Dude you don’t want to touch me. I’m-I uh- I like- Fuck I’m  _ apparently _ turning in to Bill.” A small, insincere chuckle came out as Richie slowly entangled his hands into his hair and pulled, eye’s scrunching shut, pushing more tears out. He opened his eyes and then his mouth, forming shapes but not letting any sounds out. He bit his lip and turned around.

The shorter kid all but ran up to his room, Stan following at a fast, but more reasonable pace. When he entered the room a notebook was thrust into his hands, he gave his friend a questioning look but then glanced down at the pages. Pages full of hearts, some colored in, some empty, some with R + E in the middle. In some spots he could see “Eddie” written down, but most instances were scribbled over. Oh.

He set the notebook down on the nearby desk and sat next to Richie on the bed. His friend wouldn’t even look at him, his lips trembling as he squeezed his biceps. Neither seemed able to speak so Stan did the only thing he could think of and pulled him into a tight hug.

A surprised gargle left Richie’s throat but he didn’t complain, instead returning the hug even tighter. His head buried into Stan’s shoulder as he cried, hard. The sobs travelling through his shoulders, his glasses sitting halfway off his face in the nook of the taller boy’s neck. A hand rubbed up and down his back. They sat like this for a while, maybe ten minutes, until the crying had mostly stopped.

Stan still wasn’t sure what to say, how to tell him that he still cared. He tried to organize his thoughts, and then his words, but he wasn’t known for being the comforting one. The trustworthy one, sure. The advice giver, absolutely! But comfort? That was usually Ben’s job. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily given the words spoken, the silence was broken for him.

“I never told you about the time I tried to kill myself.”

He sat there, mouth agape, “Wait what? Richie- Why would you-” The words came out harsher than intended, the look on the other boy’s face made that clear. He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, “Why Richie?”

“It was forever ago, not really worth mentioning. Besides I couldn’t tell you without… telling you.” He shrugged and gestured to the notebook on his desk. He bit his lip, hesitating. “I uh, it was in like first grade or something. I… got my first crush.” His face looked, shameful. Like his feelings were wrong in some way. “I felt so happy and giddy inside, I waited all night for my dad to get home so I could ask him for advice. He- He seemed happy and laughed and told me to invite her over for ice cream or something. But then I told him, it- it wasn’t a her and then…” 

His breathing started getting heavy again Stan put his arm around his shoulder, trying to give some sense of comfort to him. It seemed to work as he calmed down slightly.

“He… hit me for the first time. And kept hitting me. And mymom she- she heard thenoisesandcameinandshe-” 

“Deep breaths.”

“This was before she started drinking y’know? So she, she actually cared somewhat. She tried to get him to stop but then he told her, what happened. What I was. A f- a faggot. Her face was just so… so disappointed and horrified and I could tell how much I hurt her. They let me go, said they had to talk about how to punish me. I could hear them yelling, yelling about how evil g-” His nose twitched, like he had just tasted something horrible, “...people like me are. They said that we were all better off dead so I-I opened my window and thought ‘this might as well happen.’ I didn’t want to see them so devastated and ashamed.”

Stan’s breath was sharp and his entire body was shaking, but this wasn’t about him. He had to stay strong, had to hold his composure. But his voice betrayed him as it waverd, “And then?”

“I jumped. And I landed and broke my fucking arm, hurt like a bitch.” He chuckled out the last part.

There were so many questions inside Stan’s mind, how long before they found you? How did they punish you? What do you mean it was the  _ first _ time your dad hit you? But he figured he would hear the answers when Richie was ready to say them. Instead, he wrapped his arms around him again. “I’m sorry.” He whispered. “It’s okay to be you.”

\----------------------------

The losers were sitting by their far from finished dam. Mike and Eddie were talking, Beverly was suntanning, and Ben and Bill were discussing how to continue their blockade. 

“Ey waht’s this? By Geroge Martha! It’s the river Nile! And five- count them- five sphinxes!” The group looked over to find Richie and Stan marching down to them through the trees. 

“R-Richie?” Bill questioned.

“You were expecting maybe Gunga Din?” Richie quickly made his way to Eddie and threw his arm around the smaller boy, pulling him in for a noogie. “How’s it going, Eddie Spaghetti?”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I questioned whether or not I should put in the suicide attempt especially as a young child but I had a similar situation. Tried to suffocate myself in preschool when my grandma was yelling about how "fags deserve to die." Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. I like writing and reading coming out stories, and this was kinda a vent. I tried to stay in character. Leave me comments, tell me what I could do better and what you liked about it!


End file.
